Update: chronic myelogenous leukemia clinical practice guidelines

Although meetings to update the specific NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology generally occur only once a year, the panel on chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) met shortly after devising the original guideline. The reason was the incorporation of the then recently U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved tyrosine kinase inhibitor STI-571, or imatinib mesylate, into the guidelines. The treatment of CML has been radically altered by the introduction of imatinib. However, important questions still have not been answered. For example, which patients may be cured with imatinib and which patients should still be offered transplant early in the course of their disease?